A collection of online video lectures (feel free to add your own)

**DuB** · 07-03-2010 12:38 AM

In my free time I like to watch online video lectures by various academics. Over the years I've come across quite a few really good ones. I thought I would post some of those here in the thread, along with a very brief description, for you all to enjoy as well. It would be nice if you all could contribute some of your favorites as well, and if we could use this thread to discuss some of the videos others have posted. If the discussion for a particular video looks like it's becoming substantial, we can break it off into a new thread.

These are obviously going to be biased towards reflecting my own personal academic interests, and thus tend to be by psychologists, philosophers, biologists, and economists (more or less in that order). However, there is no reason that we need to stick to these topics, so feel free to post lectures related to whatever interests you. I'd prefer lecture videos to documentaries, but if the documentary is good enough I suppose that's okay. I've omitted TED talks on the assumption that most of us are familiar with those.

Doug Hofstadter - It’s Like This Other Thing
Doug Hofstadter (of Godel, Escher, Bach fame) is a cognitive scientist who also dabbles in philosophy. One of his primary interests is in the psychology of analogy and metaphor. This highly entertaining talk covers some of his basic views on the subject. (I should also add that this features the longest introduction to a speaker ever... Doug finally takes the stage at about 13:40)

Marc Hauser on Our Moral Intuitions
Really interesting talk that looks at, among other things, systematic patterns in peoples' responses to moral dilemmas. Hauser also does research on Capuchin monkeys so he brings a comparative/evolutionary perspective to the topic as well.

Conversation with Daniel Gilbert
I think you have to download some sort of Veoh Web Player to view this one. But it's free and I've been using it for a few years without any problems (like ads and etc.). Anyway, this is an interesting if somewhat unfocused extended interview (or "conversation") between Marc Hauser (from above) and Dan Gilbert, both Harvard psychologists.

Steven Pinker on his book "The Blank Slate"
Steven Pinker on his book "The Stuff Of Thought"
Richard Dawkins interviews Steven Pinker
Some good videos of/by Pinker. The first is on some of the interesting cultural and intellectual remnants of the "nature vs. nurture debate," the second is on natural grammar and what that allows us to infer about basic cognition, and the third is a conversation about evolutionary psychology.

Dan Dennett - Brains, Computers, and Minds (day 1) (day 2) (day 3)
Dan Dennet - Is Science Showing That We Don't Have Free Will?
Dan Dennett - Breaking The Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon (lecture) (interview)
Dan Dennett on theology
Richard Dawkins interviews Dan Dennett
Quite a few videos by Dennett. Clearly I enjoy his talks. The first is a series of talks on what he's best known for talking about, namely consciousness and artificial intelligence. The second is about his views on free will. The third and fourth are, generally speaking, about religion. And the last is about Darwin and the idea of natural selection.

Alex Rosenberg & David Levine - Economics as Science
An interesting and somewhat tense discussion between philosopher of science Alex Rosenberg and economist David Levine. It is on the strengths and shortcomings (mostly shortcomings) of economics and its status as a scientific discipline.

David Chalmers & John Horgan - Consciousness Explained, kind of
Horgan and Chalmers discuss Chalmers's general views on consciousness.

Bert Hölldobler & E.O. Wilson - The Superorganism
On the eusocial ("true social") insects. They focus on ants, but also briefly discuss wasps, bees, and termites.

Daniel Kahneman on intuition and cognitive illusions
Daniel Kahneman on well-being
Daniel Kahneman is a renowned psychologist and 2002 Nobel laureate in economics. He and his late collaborator Amos Tversky began an ongoing research tradition known as the "heuristics and biases" approach to judgment & decision-making. In more recent years his research has focused on well-being and hedonic psychology.

Gerg Gigerenzer - The Intelligence of the Unconscious
Gerg Gigerenzer on "fast and frugal heuristics" and bounded rationality. Gigerenzer's work is on behavioral decision theory and he is well known for being highly critical of the work by Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky (from above).

Shane Frederick - How Much Do We Differ From Others and When Do We Know it?
Shane Frederick - When I’m 64: Discounting, Time Preference, and Personal Identity
It's been a while since I've seen these two. The second is about the phenomenon of time discounting in decision making. I don't remember much about the first but I seem to recall it as being interesting. Shane Frederick has collaborated with Danny Kahneman in the past, so his work is in a broadly similar vein.

Conversation with Paul Ekman
Dacher Keltner & Paul Ekman - Does Darwin Illuminate Emotion & Spirituality?
Paul Ekman is the psychologist who is the basis for the main character in the show "Lie To Me." The first talk here is about his research on the universality of emotions and his Facial Action Coding System (FACS). The second is about the evolution of emotion.

Sam Gosling - What Your Stuff Says About You
A somewhat unfocused but entertaining talk by Sam Gosling on his recent research, wherein he examines peoples' living spaces and looks for patterns and correlations with personality characteristics.

Phil Tetlock - Expert Forecasting
Phil Tetlock on the general inadequacy of expert forecasting, why it tends to be inadequate, and what to do about it.

Richard Thaler - Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Thaler, along with Kahneman and Tversky (from above), was one of the earliest proponents of what has become known as behavioral economics. Here he talks about his book, which advocates using behavioral principles from this field for the common good of society.

Christopher Dye - Are Humans Still Evolving?
Pretty self-explanatory I think...

The State of Cognitive Neuroscience: Accomplishments and Prospects
From the Harvard website: "How have advances in the brain sciences informed the mind sciences, and how well has cognitive neuroscience fared and where is it going? Moderated by Marc Hauser. Speakers included Alfonoso Caramazza, Stephen Kosslyn, and Daniel Schacter."

John Searle on free will
An interesting talk, even if I'm still not totally clear on what his overall view is.

Human, All Too Human - Jean Paul Sartre
Human, All Too Human - Martin Heidegger
Human, All Too Human - Friedrich Nietzsche
These are the only documentaries I've chosen to post. It is a series of biographies on three of the most influential continental philosophers.

**Xei** · 07-03-2010 02:20 AM

Christ I hate John Searle and his idiotic philosophical arguments.

Thanks for these anyway, I'll definitely be using this thread. I'm also getting into the online lecture thing at the moment; I'm doing a philosophy course from Oxford and a history course from UCLA. Also I've been heavily using the MIT videos to bolster my mathematics, and also to teach me computer programming and electromagnetism.

I can especially recommend the MIT vids (all available on youtube); the electromagnetism lecturer in particular is the best lecturer I've ever seen, everybody should check out the first few; it gets mathematical quite quickly but then you can use the MIT maths vids.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3omwHv3Cmog

**DuB** · 07-03-2010 02:27 AM

His arguments do not typically represent a beacon of logical clarity, but I find the lectures entertaining nonetheless.

I recommend Hofstadter's talk. I put it on the top because it's my favorite. But the rest of the links after that one are not listed in any particularly systematic order.

**Clyde Machine** · 07-03-2010 08:51 PM

Ooh, I imagine I'll find a little something to learn among these links! I love self-education - on a casual level, on a serious level, and all in between.

**DuB** · 08-17-2010 04:14 AM

I've got a few more to post. I also want to give this thread a bit of a bump as nobody really stepped up to offer any interesting videos of their own except for Xei, and I'd very much like to see what others have to offer even if it's not necessarily from within my own somewhat narrow set of preferred topics.

George Lakoff - The Political Mind
George Lakoff - Whose Freedom?
Some videos that are both loosely about what some have called political psychology. The first is an examination of the role that emotion plays in our political judgments, and the second is an analysis of the different meanings that people attribute to the notion of "freedom" in political contexts.

The New Science of Morality
This is a really excellent series of videos recorded from a conference on the cognitive science behind moral reasoning, attended by psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists. Each attendee gives a brief presentation (~25 minutes) which is then followed by some group discussion (~20 minutes). Highly recommended.

Dan Dennett - Good reasons for "believing" in God
This talk is similar to the one I linked in the OP as "Dan Dennett on theology." It was presented 2 years earlier at the same annual conference. The focus of this talk is why religious belief continues to persist in some form or other, and the different ways in which people profess to believe.

Yale course on Game Theory
As the title suggests, this is a series of lectures recorded during an economics course at Yale on Game Theory. This instructor is very entertaining, and from the lectures I've watched so far he really seems to make what could be a tedious subject into something actually very interesting.

Thomas Nadelhoffer - Developments in Neuroscience and their Implications for Criminal Law
While this extended interview is, according to the title, officially about the interface between neuroscience and law, Nadelhoffer is a philosopher by profession and he spends more time talking about things from a philosophical perspective than he does talking about neuroscience per se. Nevertheless, it's a very interesting interview about the theory and practice of criminal punishment.

**stormcrow** · 08-30-2010 05:56 AM

thanks for all the videos guys
heres some random stuff :Heidegger, Zizek, Lacan and Mckenna

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt3EQrHm6NE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh-W9qGZ7bs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXi46W51104

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwlirZQLAAg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfaYHIvfU64

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEbJ2VGJ0jQ

**FallenAwake** · 04-30-2011 09:40 PM

Hrm, an old thread but here's a presentation I enjoyed a lot. The guy is damn adorable too.

Matt Walker: Secrets of the Sleeping Brain
UC Berkeley's Matt Walker's presentation addresses sleep and memory. Lucid dreaming isn't addressed but I found it quite fascinating.

Spoiler for Summary:

**HeavySleeper** · 04-30-2011 11:09 PM

I always watch TED vids online.

**StonedApe** · 04-30-2011 11:20 PM

The links have changed for the Hofstadter video

It’s Like This Other Thing | Channel N

**DuB** · 04-30-2011 11:23 PM

Thanks. There are probably several of the videos from above for which the links have changed since this was posted. Any other replacement links that people want to post would be much appreciated.

I would also appreciate new, original links!!

**stormcrow** · 05-01-2011 12:21 AM

Oh man I forgot all about this (great)thread. I cant believe I posted Mckenna and Zizek videos when everyone else was posting rad scientific videos lol.
Anyway these are some great youtube channels: YouTube - velicamer's Channel
YouTube - QualiaSoup's Channel
YouTube - Eidos84's Channel
YouTube - Best0fScience's Channel
YouTube - LennyBound's Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/flame0430?blend=24&ob=5
Also a great explanation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
http://youtu.be/bONCVh-Kbu4

**Descensus** · 05-01-2011 03:25 AM

A talk by one of my favorite speakers, Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Institute, on Power versus the Market: YouTube - Power versus the Market | Jeffrey A. Tucker
An uncut interview between Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett on Darwin and other things: YouTube - Daniel Dennett - The Genius of Charles Darwin: The Uncut Interviews
Great interview with Neil Degrasse Tyson by Ted Simons: YouTube - Horizon Neil deGrasse Tyson
A debate between Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio and the Venus Project: YouTube - Freedomain Radio Debates The Venus Project/Zeitgeist Moving Forward (Peter Joseph)
A discussion between Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens (Part 1): YouTube - The Four Horsemen HD: Hour 1 of 2 - Discussions with Richard Dawkins, Ep 1, Part 2: YouTube - The Four Horsemen: Hour 2 of 2 - Discussions with Richard Dawkins, Ep 1

**FallenAwake** · 05-01-2011 12:26 PM

Larry Lessig (Harvard) - copyright and how it has affected open access to academic or scientific information

Spoiler for Description:

**CryoDragoon** · 05-02-2011 05:16 PM

**FallenAwake** · 05-03-2011 02:25 AM

Helen Fisher tells us why we love + cheat

(TED)
"About this talk

Anthropologist Helen Fisher takes on a tricky topic -- love –- and explains its evolution, its biochemical foundations and its social importance. She closes with a warning about the potential disaster inherent in antidepressant abuse.
About Helen Fisher

Anthropologist Helen Fisher studies gender differences and the evolution of human emotions. She's best known as an expert on romantic love, and her beautifully penned books"

**dajo** · 05-03-2011 06:57 AM

Free Science and Video Lectures Online!

http://hulk03.princeton.edu:8080/WebMedia/lectures/

All Videos | Browse Videos | MIT World

Download & Streaming : Open Educational Resources : Internet Archive

YouTube - AtGoogleTalks's Channel

videolectures.net - videolectures.net

Lecture Series

Feynman Online

**Dannon Oneironaut** · 05-06-2011 07:43 AM

Here is a great youtube channel with cool demonstrations of easy and fascinating do-it-yourself free energy projects:

YouTube - GREENPOWERSCIENCE's Channel

I like the fresnell lens and the parabolic mirrors.

**FallenAwake** · 05-19-2011 08:07 PM

Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn

**stormcrow** · 05-21-2011 07:08 PM

**FallenAwake** · 05-22-2011 08:40 AM

"June Tangney, professor of psychology at George Mason University, delves into shame and guilt by looking into various facets of our society such as the criminal justice system, children, families, incarcerated offenders, teachers and parents. Shame and guilt are often mentioned in the same breath as moral emotions that inhibit destructive, socially unacceptable behaviors, but how similar are these two emotions? Recent research indicates that guilt is the more adaptive emotion and can motivate people to behave in a moral, caring, socially responsible manner. In contrast, feelings of shame (about the self) can easily go awry. Discover more about this intriguing research, what it reveals and how it relates to our society."

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